Germany's increasingly radical vote keeps moving further right

There is little surprising about the result of Sunday's election in Saxony-Anhalt, the article argues. What is more troubling is that Germany's shift toward the far right has continued to intensify through three governments, under Angela Merkel, Olaf Scholz and now Friedrich Merz.

The two developments are closely connected. The rise of the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, began with a small gathering on Feb. 6, 2013, when 18 people met in a community room at an evangelical church in Oberursel, Hesse. Many were academics, including liberal economists and conservatives disappointed with Merkel's Christian Democratic Union.

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There is no alternative.

The party initially focused on taking Germany out of the euro. Its name echoed Merkel's defiant response to the Greek debt crisis, when she rejected calls to cancel Germany's financial support for a bailout and told Parliament, “There is no alternative.” But the refugee crisis of 2015 changed the party. As Germany received one million immigrants, an extremist current took control of its leadership and buried its founding programme.

Anti-Muslim and anti-woke slogans, support for Russia and increasingly aggressive rhetoric then became central to the AfD's agenda. Alexander Gauland, one of its leaders, provoked criticism by describing Hitler's Reich as “a mere speck of insignificance in 1,000 years of successful German history.”

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A mere speck of insignificance in 1,000 years of successful German history.

That connection with the Nazi era has continued to assert itself. Der Spiegel recently triggered a bitter debate by placing leading candidate Ulrich Siegmund beneath the headline “Germany's most dangerous man.” The magazine revisited failed attempts to ban the party for allegedly embodying anti-constitutional values, as well as the past of Siegmund, his deputy and other key team members as members of the Patriotic Youth of Germany, an organization banned as neo-Nazi in 2009. The attempted exposé instead became a campaign slogan for Siegmund and drew heavy criticism toward the magazine.

The controversy pushed the AfD's 156-page programme out of the public debate. Sunday's vote nevertheless legitimized its core proposals, including a drastic restriction of asylum seekers' rights and possible “remigration,” or expulsion, as well as the introduction of ultraconservative ideology in social policy.

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Germany's most dangerous man.